On haymaking days in the master’s field, I strike up an acquaintance with the Frog. Flayed and stuck at the end of a split stick, he serves as live bait to tempt the Crayfish from his retreat by the edge of the brook. On the alder-tree I catch the Hoplia, the splendid Beetle who pales the azure of the heavens. I pick the narcissus and learn to gather, with the tip of my tongue, the tiny drops of honey that lie right at the bottom of the cleft corolla. I also learn that too-long indulgence in this quest always brings a headache; but this discomfort in no way impairs my admiration for the glorious white flower, which wears a narrow red collar at the throat of its funnel. When we go to beat the walnut-trees, the barren grass-plots provide me with Locusts, spreading their wings, some into a blue fan, others into a red. And thus the rustic school, even in the heart of winter, furnished continuous food for my interest in things. But while the love of plants and animals developed automatically, without guide or example, in the child predestined to entomology, there was one respect in which he did not make progress: the knowledge of the alphabet, which was indeed neglected for the pigeon. Consequently neither the schoolmaster nor the spelling-book had much to do with the earliest stage of his education. He tells us how he learned to read, not at Master Ricard’s, but, thanks to his father, in the school of the animals and nature: I was still at the same stage, hopelessly behind-hand with the intractable alphabet, when my father, by a chance inspiration, brought me home from the town what was destined to give me a start along the road of reading. Despite the not insignificant part which it played in my intellectual awakening, the purchase was by no means a ruinous one. It was a large print, price six farthings, coloured and divided into compartments in which animals of all sorts taught the A, B, C by means of the first letters of their names. I made such rapid progress that, in a few days, I was able to turn in good earnest to the pages of my little pigeon-book, hitherto so undecipherable. I was initiated; I knew how to spell. My parents marvelled. I can explain this unexpected progress to-day. Those speaking pictures, which brought me among my friends the beasts, were in harmony with my instincts. If the animal has not fulfilled all that it promised in so far as I am concerned, I have at least to thank it for teaching me to read. I should have succeeded by other means, I do not doubt, but not so quickly or pleasantly. Animals for ever!